The name you recieved was basicallty decided to be based on who you are, such as your gender, if you were adopted, how big your family is and so on.
Aristocratic Romans in the Republic had all three names, until late in the Republic then there were two, Gaius Marius, Gnaeus Pompeius. There were only a small number of names used and these tended to be in small families. The son was usualy named after his father and then are known as his "followers" later on.
Men with two or three names could be officially awarded an additional cognomen, an “honorific” which they do not usually pass down to their decendants. If a boy was adopted replacing their son from once before the child would inherit all three names from his adoptive father. The Romans feel that saying adoptive is disrespectful and that no matter what or how that child got there it belonged to them. All female children of citizen families were named with the feminine form of the clan into which they were born. When slaves were freed, they occupied a middle status between the freeborn and the enslaved; they were referred to as liberti or liberteni, which we translate as “freedpeople.” {liberty} Those are some examples of Roman names. I think theyre are special because each one really symbolizes the person and basically who they will become later in life.
Aristocratic Romans in the Republic had all three names, until late in the Republic then there were two, Gaius Marius, Gnaeus Pompeius. There were only a small number of names used and these tended to be in small families. The son was usualy named after his father and then are known as his "followers" later on.
Men with two or three names could be officially awarded an additional cognomen, an “honorific” which they do not usually pass down to their decendants. If a boy was adopted replacing their son from once before the child would inherit all three names from his adoptive father. The Romans feel that saying adoptive is disrespectful and that no matter what or how that child got there it belonged to them. All female children of citizen families were named with the feminine form of the clan into which they were born. When slaves were freed, they occupied a middle status between the freeborn and the enslaved; they were referred to as liberti or liberteni, which we translate as “freedpeople.” {liberty} Those are some examples of Roman names. I think theyre are special because each one really symbolizes the person and basically who they will become later in life.